Non-Yahoo Watch: Rand Paul

by Michael Sean Winters

Distinctly Catholic

Politics makes strange bedfellows, they say. Rand Paul, the Republican candidate for Senate in Kentucky, who got into a heap of trouble when he expressed some extreme views regarding the Civil Rights Act has come forth with a statement about the ground zero mosque that is, all things considered, admirable. I do not share his concern for property rights in the matter so much as his concern for the First Amendment. And, I do not believe his swipes at “neo-conservatives” regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are on point, in part because the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were engaged on vastly different rationales. But, no matter, he gets applause for denouncing the objections to the mosque as demagoguery and for seeing the anti-Muslim animus for what it is, a political battering ram being employed for political purposes. Kudos to Paul. (H/T to Rick Garnett)